Samz707

If someone doesn't actually enjoy the base gameplay in TH, they may not want to replay it, stuff like customization and such only goes so far (and can arguably takeaway from a game if it's poorly balacned around it.) if you don't enjoy the actual base mechanics, so if someone prefers how the older FE games, then they'd do that. The monestary itself is a reason that more than a good few people wouldn't exactly be jumping to replay this.

Technically, there is economic planning, it's managing your money and inventory. (Well, in the games like Fe7 where you can't always buy stuff and money is actually somewhat scarce, enough to the point where you can't buy tons of everything.) You're mostly thinking of Grand Strategy games/resource gathering strategy games. Men of War tends to be labelled as a strategy game and it's basically just all about the combat side and nothing carries over into later missions. (Outside of a small handful of missions in the very first game, Soldiers:Heroes of WW2).) Codename:Steam also lacks those elements and tends to be labelled a strategy game as well as good few other games where the focus is pretty much just on individual troop combat.

Eh just because others don't like it doesn't mean you can't. I like a good few games that tend to be wildly considered bad, yeah I do agree with the flaws most of the time but I can still enjoy it for what I enjoy in it.

So far in 3 hours, I'd disagree. Yes, Echoes has simple maps but so far in the exact same amount of time there's been more actual depth, Mountain tiles that protect you but slow you down (And having an enemy with a shield show up early on, showing how effective they are at stopping attacks, which if you forgot to class-change like me are a rude awakening that you should really get at least one unit as a mage ASAP.) Yes that one map with a single bridge is kinda simple but it still has depth in that the one-tile wide bridge is a chokepoint you can funnel enemies through, it's simplistic but there's still an element of capturing a strategic location than taking advantage of it. The closest thing so far was a map in TH (First Aux battle.) where I literally spawned one-two tiles away from a grass tile, I didn't rush to the tiles so I'd have an advantage against the last few enemies like the bridge, I was on an advantage right away and just sat there, practically where I spawned, to have an advantage, same with the two-tile bridge on the Red Canyon map, you literally spawn ontop of a good chokepoint so there's no incentive to move up til' everyone's dead, I literally just sit at where I spawned and that's the optimal strategy for an entire map, never had to push up, never had to do anything other than the odd bit of healing and attacks, just sit at where I spawned and win. (I wasted 3 hours in a the monestary to literally win a map in less than 10 minutes by just camping at the very start.) I'd rather have one good position on a map that I have to make my way towards than literally spawning on one that lets me kill all/most of the enemies on the map. Even the first real battle, where you're told to "split up" has no real incentive to do so, there's a chest near one route and that's it, your only advantage is that you have a better spot to fight a single archer enemy. Even the tutorial map of FE6 made it so you were seriously screwed if Lilina died since your boss was an armor dude who'd mess Roy up easily meanwhile literally no armored dudes to encourage magic users have shown up in Three Houses yet Mages have just sorta been "Archers I don't have to pay to get a new bow" so far. Again, Third map of Echoes, dude with a shield that you'll seriously want to have a magic user defeat, so you have to single out a dude as a signifficant threat and it introduces you to the shield items, Third map of Three Houses, I sat at the bushes I spawned on and that was the entire strategy.

You could just not play it. I only even got since Echoes made me hopeful FE would be going in a direction I'd actually enjoy and I can safely say I was more disappointed than even before I played Echoes and assumed Three Houses wasn't that good. (Since even stuff that I didn't even consider they could screw up, like a mini-map, are completely screwed, It's pretty much safe to say I like absolutely nothing about this game I'm over 3 hours into.)

This is going to be a bit of rant but here goes: Pacing. Yes, the GBA games have small maps, but you're in one-fight after another, so small, frequent battles. With Three Houses, I play for an hour or two to get into a fight that's actually practically just as basic as the tutorial stage of FE6 and I'm over 3 hours in at this point and I've only been in 4 barely more than 10 minutes fights and one of them (my first Aux battle) was literally beaten by camping in forest/vegetation tiles at my spawn since I spawned with the enemies and tiles next to me so I basically just let the enemies suicide on my and barely actually played the strategy part of a strategy game. Characters. I think when I'm 3 hours in, I can compare the characters to another game I'm roughly the same time in, On FE6 so far, none of the characters have annoyed me, infact some of them (Such as Clarine) have actually made me interested in finding out more about them, I want to get supports to see more of these characters. In Three Houses, I could give less of a pegasus dung about anyone, when the game asks you to pick your house despite knowing nothing about anyone (With the game's only real information being Blyeth knowing about Dimitri having a dark half because of this psychic ability called "Reading the script" because the writers are bad at their jobs.), oh maybe I'll get to know a bit about everyone when we're training for the mock batt- oh, wait no, the game just skipped all over Byleth's first week actually training everyone and Rhea is now asking me if I'm friends with my students, who Byleth has only interacted with for a week and I, the player have not interacted with at all, I swear FE manages to actually make the friendships between characters worse the more they try to focus on it so most of my students are ok with my mostly mute generic protagonist and way more buddy-buddy than most people are with teachers that have actual personalities in their first week. As for individual characters, well Bernie magically now suddenly is ok with Blyeth despite knowing them for a small period of time since I got her C-support before I even had my first non-mock battle, so this shy character who's timidness was the only character I cared about, wondering how the devs would handle it, I no longer care for since clearly Byleth's protagonist friendship powers beats any sort of social barrier via the power of buying a girl spaghetti like once. Lindhart killed someone in the first real battle, taunted them over it and then 180'd into "OH MY GOD I KILLED SOMEONE" Mode so he literally just flip-flopped between emotions because some programmer didn't realize you should disable the combat taunts if someone's supposed to be horrified by killing people so by the virture of this I have offically stopped caring about anyone since the game's developers clearly didn't because why should I get invested in anyone when it's clear the devs couldn't be bothered to put any effort in. Florina's supports with Hector look like the Shakesphere of Fire Emblem Writing for shy characters compared to the C support of Bernie, if that C support at least took most of the game to unlock, I'd be fine with it but I've literally only been in a single fight with her at that point. Tactics Weapon Arts are just boring objectively better than regular attacks, as opposed to the HP costing and situational and overall more fun weapon arts from Echoes, Batalions are just boring super moves/stat boosts that should have been the actual weapon arts and the weapon triangle was removed and at least one fun spell (Thunder) has been nerfed to the point where it's pointless.and just a bootleg version of another spell. (Fire) Visuals It looks worse than Echoes, there's less colour, everyone's faces look terrible in Battles due to the jagged edges, up close in the monestary everyone's faces look terrible due to the awful nose outlines that someone who shouldn't be working on any 3D art thought looked okay and just in general, it looks bad, Echoes was a decent looking game that felt like it only didn't look better due to being on a 3DS while Three Houses feels like a game that's just barely better than that and only by virtue of being on a console rather than any actual talent. Also the constant fade in/out of "Mook" characters in battles was a terrible idea, that only serves to highlight how little people are actually fighting (a fact I rarely noticed in previous FE games.), looks awful as people clearly load in/out of battle and if anyone levels up then you're going to see the generic dudes fade out while the camera is still zoomed in and in general the battles actually look worse than Echoes but they threw a bunch of fancy visual effects on scree for when you use stuff such as Curved shot, which only just makes it look silly when Bernie causes a mini-helicopter updraft over 5 time a battle since that's the only way to have Archers have actual range and never really was cool in the first place. Deadly Premonition was a video game on the 360, it was lambasted for it's PS2 looking visuals when it came out. why do I bring this random game up? because it has a switch port and it looks better than Three houses in just about every way. Oh and the mini-map is pointless, since it just shows Units by what weapon they have equipped, which considering this is Fire Emblem (With Perma-death and limited units and also because TH got rid of weapon-restricted classes anyway) tells me absolutely nothing about which unit it is, you HAVE 2D GBA-style art for characters in another menu, why not use that in the mini-map so it's actually worth a damn. Performance Somehow this runs worse than Echoes, I've had note-worthy lag when fully zoomed out, the Monestary lags constantly when you run (as the game stops Byleth running entirely to let the game load), characters obviously fade in/out of existence in it, Most characters can't actually walk which makes it feel super fake (Seriously even Postal 2, one of the most infamous "Worst games ever made", managed to have NPCs walking around and some more Dynamic behaviour that is not in Three Houses.) and just in general, the game looks bad and runs bad in my experience. Again, Deadly Premonition, set in a small town and every single named character has their own unique little routine they go through every day, every character has their own unique path of doing things (Not counting generics who you'll see in certain areas/occasionally on the road), so Three Houses looks like a baby's first indie game compared to an actual indie game from the 360 Era that just had a Switch port and there are roughly 28 characters in Deadly Premoniton so I'm sure a triple A game like TH could manage to have a unique path for all your recruitable characters if they cared about having the monestary not be a massive time waster. It pretty much does everything worse than the other FE games I've played, I think Awakening is a trainfire but at least in Awakening, I can boot up the game and try to enjoy a battle, in Three Houses, I boot up the game and I might spend an entire hour without any actual meaningful gameplay going on.

Yeah I don't like contrived bits either, while I doubt I'll get to Blue Lions (Since I'm on Crimson Flower and I'm seriously doubting I'll ever actually replay this.), Stuff like Edelgard's axe vanishing so Blyeth can get themselves killed is contrived as hell and the devs should have realized it was a terrible idea to do it.

That's a common issue in games in my experience. In some games (Such as Oni by Bungie), Normal is still fairly challenging but not super-hard usually while in other games the Normal difficulty is rather Easy and the actual Easy mode is practically a cake-walk. For me personally I did enjoy SOV partially because of it's voice acting but I actually do not like TH's story telling for various reasons. (Stuff like character's weapons inexplicably vanishing such as Edelgard's axe really annoys me whenever video games do that, if a plot point requires a character to suddenly be unarmed/poorly armed just after a level where they almost always/outright will be heavily armed in games it always bothers me..) Also I feel like half the "Mystery" so far comes from Byleth just not asking obvious questions (Such as asking Jeralt why they shouldn't trust Rhea or not asking Leonie/Jeralt how they met.) which feels contrived and only makes me care less about the story when the writer has to literally just have the main character not ask an obvious question for a forced attempt at mysteray. Also the fact that some of the new stuff just heavily back-fired poorly for me, Such as everyone getting a "first kill" reaction...except they didn't code the basic combat dialogue to be disabled, so I got this bit of dialogue from Lindhardt: "It must be awful, losing to me." "I... killed them. What have I done? The blood..." So Lindhardt taunts a dude after cutting him down with no emotional reaction then suddenly cares about the fact he's killed someone, that kinda sloppy stuff only makes me care less about the story. (So I actually consider most FE games not adressing the nature of taking a life for the first time better since at least they don't completely screw it up like Three Houses does.) Your point makes sense but so far I would still rate TH worse than FE7 regardless of the fact it has voice acting in the story department since I didn't have anyone taunt a dude after killing him only to suddenly poorly go through the "I killed someone for the first time" stuff. Then you have flat-out crap like Byleth magically knowing that Dimitri has an inner-darkness, because lord forbid the writers actually write some way to interestingly show off that maybe Dimitri has a dark half when your wonderful OC can just magically know it after knowing the dude for less than an hour because plot. (Also Byleth magically becoming friends with everyone, off-screen, in one week is god awful writing.) Yes Voice acting helps but if your script is terrible that's not going to fix it usually.

It's very different (It's a game about hiring mercenaries to liberate a Banana Republic and I guess is a bit like the 2D fallouts if they had more in-depth combat mechanics and not a whole lot of roleplaying, there is a demo floating around online, it's good but very unforgiving.) but my point was that it gives similar (And I'd argue, actually better.) training mechanics and it doesn't take hours to get into a battle. Also instead of getting Battalions (Which were extremely underwhelming when it turned out they were just special attacks and not actually extra units, which I felt was kinda lazy.), you trained up the local populace to help fight back (So you essentially trained green units using the training mechanic.), it's still kinda meh (You can only use them to defend locations since there's a territory mechanic instead of being able to recruit them into your playable forces, at least not without mods so they're essentially just extra green units on defend maps.) but it's closer to what I think Battalions should have been. (extra forces that are generic dudes instead of a glorified special attack and stats boost.) The fact it was made in 1999 only serves to kinda make me even more annoyed with 3H, since it's new mechanics (That I feel were done extremely poorly) were done better, by a probably smaller game studio, a long while ago on their second attempt (JA1 did have training but no morale system and even then it was just having a Unit not fight in the current day for a small increase in stats, the ability to have other units teach skills to other units was added in JA2 as well as the Morale mechanics.), I don't mind the odd small unpolished mechanic but when the entire selling point of your game feels more hollow than a game that actually had it more as an aside thing, it sorta makes me just want to play that game instead for a training units mechanic. (In addition to 3H taking it sweet time actually letting you get to a fight, then taking it's sweet time to let you get into a next fight.)

Well for me personally, it's more of the fact the school adds very little, we've actually had similar "training" mechanics in Jagged Alliance 2 (released in 1999), except in that game you didn't need to spend hours stuck in a base just to get to a new battle, (And battles actually last a decent time in JA2, while any battle so far in TH ends way too soon to be worth the wait in the Monestary.) It also had a leadership stat, which effected how good a unit was at teaching other units (since units could either train alone or you could get a unit who was better at that thing to help train them.) and a Morale system. (Which can be basically summed up as "Motivation but it effects more stuff than just training.", So two units who are friends fighting together? they'll get higher hit-rates and Perform most actions such as sneaking/healing better but if someone's friend dies they'll be gloomy for a while and generally perform worse and maybe even quit if it gets low enough, it even had death reactions for any units who were friends/lovers/family.) JA2 basically does what TH seeks to add better and with much less wasted time in menus/running around, If I want to train dudes in JA2 , I open up a quick menu, use a few mouse clicks and that's it, they're training and its' hands-off til' I want them back, I train in TH and I constantly click units then Press A to Praise which takes more clicks. (Also Press A to Praise is pretty much as bad as "Press X to pay Respects.") The school basically just wastes your time with pointless busy work even when other games have shown how similar mechanics could actually be done alot more faster and more in-depth/better, I have played 3H for over 3 hours, I have less than a single hour of actual game time spent in battles, so it's a slog to just get into a single battle which is then over too quickly, I can set aside an hour to play and I'm lucky so far if I actually get into a battle. (Also not a fan of the story/cutscene direction, the characters or basically any change so far honestly, like making Thunder discount fire and the visuals are kinda awful.)

Honestly I'd be kinda impressed (And definitely never buying it.) if they managed that considering how overbearing the school system already is for me. (3 hours in and not even a single hour combined time of battles which is just frankly tedious as sin, doesn't help the battles are as over as quickly as the GBA games once you actually get into one.) If we really get another base system in the next game, I'd rather we got something like X-com where the base stuff actually matters rather than just throwing in some really not good fetch-quests/bad Avatar interactions, I'd rather manage a base with resources than "Talk to X Character and pick one of two options with the only long-lasting effect being one gives a support point." while running around grabbing blue particle effects for items. The Avatar interactions in general in 3H aren't very good in my experience. (I get pretty annoyed anytime I pick a dialogue option, only for the characters to clearly speak as if I picked another dialogue option that I didn't actually pick.) I'd rather have more buying resources, managing a source of in-come and maybe even recruiting new randomized units. (So like X-com I guess, just replace researching laser weapons with tracking down magical weapons/creating new magical weapons/spells and taking down UFOs attacking cities to stopping Bandit attacks/invasions.) Honestly I think modern FE would benefit from borrowing more stuff from X-com, like being able to destroy defensive tiles with powerful enough spells and being able to shape the battlefield, Playing TH just feels like playing a worse Echoes (Such as the weapon arts so far being way more boring.) maybe you can set forest tiles on fire with fire spells so they actually damage units inside them and other stuff. (TH in general doesn't really feel like a console game.)

While I would like a ranking system, I wouldn't want it as something the player actually sees (at least, not on a first time playthrough.), rather if we must have yet another Avatar (And assuming they actually want them to be more than just a way to have 90 percent of the cast want to bone/praise the player constantly.), I'd rather have any after-battle praise be related to it. So you'd only get praised if your in-game ranking was good and actively told to get your stuff together if you've started doing consistently poorly. I've never really been a fan of "In your face" ranking systems since it always feels like I'm getting punished for not playing perfectly.

Actually I didn't mention it but I do like how Mages don't wear armor because it's actually reflected in their stats/role, they're not supposed to get in close-combat so I don't mind it. (Then you have designs like Charlotte in Fates, who despite being a close combat class is not wearing much armor and what armor she does wear doesn't actually protect her that much.) I don't mind non-combat/non-close combat classes lacking armor but when a close-combat character is mostly lacking armor it just looks silly. (Such as Fem-Byleth who looks more like she strolled out of a modern day night club than an actual mercenary.)

I liked that, Sain and Lyn got very high stats on my first Normal playthrough, to the point where they could kinda start curbstomping maps by themselves (Granted, it took well overt the half-way mark for this to happen.) however the Morph versions of old bosses were actually tough enough that I had to go back to proper tactics again, as Lyn/Sain would get absolutely destroyed if they took them on 1V1 so they were tough enough that I actually needed to have my entire army attack them together to safely bring them down.

Nope I've not played Tellius. I think it's to the point where Echoes actually looks better, you don't have generic troops constantly vanishing/appearing, Character's faces in combat actually look better with less jagged edges and there's actually more color in Echoes intentionally dead and horrible looking Swamps than in the "Unforgettable" Red Canyon in Three Houses, which is actually the most bland location I've ever seen in an FE game, to the point where I'm semi-impressed at how dull a location it actually is.(And how the script keeps insisting it's somehow majestic/unforgettable.) Sometimes the maps don't even look like they're the same art style to be honest in Three Houses, the Red Canyon looks like something out of a bland and grey "realistic" Modern Military shooter than an fantasy game, the map is almost entirely brown and grey.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I really don't like it, I think it's pretty much safe to say, that if something isn't like how it was done in previous Fe games, I think i's a bad change. (Seriously how do you even screw up a mini-map by not having it even show the actual units?, you have GBA sprites in another menu, just slap those on the map so it's actually not completely pointless.) Fire Emblem 6. Liking it so far, kinda surprised at how quick some supports go considering how it was in FE7. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. One of my favourites in the series, probably helps it's actually the least combat-focused game in the series.

Yeah 3H to me kinda looks godawful, I do not like one bit of that game's visuals and it's kinda terrible when it's clear the game devs didn't even realize it, even Deadly Premonition 2, a game lambasted for it's graphics, has better character models in what I've played of both games. Such as when you go to the Canyon early on and Sothis talks about how "unforgettable" it is while the actual map wouldn't look out of place in any generic brown and grey military game, it's literally a forgettable generic canyon level, there is nothing memorable about it on a visual level, it's literally almost entirely brown. Not to mention how frankly awful the battle models look with how jagged they look, I honestly thought the game was glitching the first time I played and wasn't rendering the faces right.

At least they aren't constantly having speedlines, dramatic close ups and wind effects. (Since wind effects and other stuff are actually saved for critical hits.) I swear it's a thing in Modern FE games to drag out combat animations as much as they can and it just contributes to how tedious I find them to actually play. (I'm only on my third battle in TH and I'm already skipping the animations because they last too long while I was well over halfway through FE7 before I started speeding them with the emulator..)

Fire Emblem needs to lay off the fancy visuals. Part of the joy of the fancy Critical hit animations in GBA games was because they're rare, You're mostly normal-y medieval dudes so when it kicks in and the fancy visual stuff starts, it's a joy both because it's rare and because the fancy visuals actually match with an fittingly cool attack. (or terrifying if the enemy got a crit.) Then you have still like Bernie using her default weapon art (which you'll do, since it has increased range, alot.) in TH where the wind starts kicking up for some reason like Bernie was an Helicopter trying to lift off even though she's just using a bow (or the constant attempts at making fights in cutscenes look fancy with flips/jumping everywhere in the 3Ds games.) or the Batallions charging with anime-speed lines despite not even going at a decent speed , it stops being cool and starts being like a bad action movie, where the omnipresent fancy visuals stop being impressive and start being boring since for me. (or just the attempts at being stylish with nose-lines in TH, which just look awful.) Same with the character designs trying to be all fancy in Awakening and just really looking bad in the process because they're overdesigned trying to be fancy outfits that just end up looking really stupid. (Such as Lissa's dress cage or character's lacking proper armor most of the time.) It's like explosions in action movies, they're good for the odd setpiece and maybe even many in a row if the situation called for it but generally if you made an action-movie where almost every scene something exploded, it loses it's charm fast.

I'd like it. Even something as simple as having the AI occasionally stay in tile bonuses to force the player to attack them at a disadvantage would be neat.

oh sorry.

I guess but in my experience with FE7 and Echoes (Aside from Thabe's Labyrinth which can buzz off.), your units are generally tanky enough and with good enough hit-rates that you'd need a serious run of bad luck to actually lose with a solid strategy, you can deploy enough units to have a few guys on standby if your plan goes wrong, everyone can usually take an hit or two and they don't tend to miss as long as you pay attention to the weapon triangle. (and if they do, well they can A: usually survive another hit and the map design/amount of units means that having someone else help out/heal them is usually an option.), you'd need a serious run of bad luck for a good strategy to fail in my experience on Normal mode in FE7/Hard mode on Echoes. The only game where it's felt like luck is a serious factor outside of hoping for a crit if my plans already are going wrong is Awakening, since everyone has much worse stats and the lower unit cap (Further lowered by pair-up, which you need to do since most of the cast are kinda absolute trash at the start.). (In addition to the map design.)

It kinda felt too easy to keep everyone alive in SOV with the rewind already, so I think casual is arguably kinda redundant now with it. I've not got far in TH but I hear that game ended up having traps that basically require the player to essentially save-scum with the rewind function to get by, so I'd rather have Classic mode instead if that's going to be the way they design games with a rewind feature. (Also Thabe's Labyrinth in Echoes with Grima basically requires you to abuse it considering how insane the enemy stats are.)

Honestly even some of the less-fanservicy design stuff in Awakening bothers me. Like Lissa with her dress cage thing, which is totally a reasonable thing to wear in a battlefield. Or the upward facing spikes on the Twins armor. I pretty much don't like any of the designs in that game to be honest, same with any of the "Returning" weapons that don't actually even remotely resemble their original apperances. (Or the frankly awful "new" designs for any of the FE7/Echoes cast, which just look like re-coloured enemy models given a quick recolour, Hector doesn't even remotely look like himself.)

Yeah that's pretty much one of the reasons I hate female-Robin/A large chunk of the female Shepards since they can marry the 14-at-most Ricken, which kinda makes them unlikable.